Human Capital: Will Trade in Personal Information Be Legalized in Russia?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

At the disposal of the editors was the text of the bill, which the digitalizers had prepared in the bowels of the Government in order to further collect, digitize and trade all kinds of information about "human capital" - that is, about you and me. We are talking about the legal regulation of the concept of "big data", which is already in full use by marketing technicians to improve the efficiency of companies, find new customers, etc.

On the one hand, it is declared that all big data in circulation will be non-personalized (that is, impersonal, it will not be possible to establish their belonging to a specific citizen), on the other hand, their collection and transfer imply placing each individual person under a “digital cap”. And here serious threats to personal and national security arise.

According to the text of the draft law, it was developed in order to "eliminate legal gaps in regulating the circulation of big data", will regulate the issues of their processing, as well as establish the competence of the authorized body, the rights and obligations of participants in the relevant public relations. The document presupposes the introduction of the concepts “big data”, “operator of big data” and “processing of big data” into the Federal Law “On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection”.

“Big data is a collection of non-personalized data that classifies according to group characteristics, including information and statistical messages, information about the position of movable and immovable objects, quantitative and qualitative characteristics of activities, behavioral aspects of movable and immovable objects received from various data owners, or from various structured / unstructured data sources, through collection using technologies, data processing methods, technical means that ensure the integration of the specified set of data, its reuse, systematic updating, the form of presentation of which does not imply their attribution to a specific individual."

To simplify as much as possible - we are talking about any non-personalized data, including those that were initially personal, but then were impersonal. Any legal and natural person can be recognized as a database operator - from the Government to a public organization, private office or individual entrepreneur. Control over the processing and circulation of databases, as well as maintaining a register of database operators, is left to the mercy of Roskomnadzor. The principles, legal grounds, rights and obligations of operators will later be established by the Government in its decrees - that is, this is a framework law that allows digital officials to roam widely in the future.

Who needs our big data? First of all, of course, business. With these amendments, operators will be able to legally trade the population database (in fact, this is already happening - for example, the Moscow City Administration has long been ordering impersonal information from mobile operators on the movement of all their metropolitan subscribers - allegedly in order to better predict urban logistics - half a billion rubles have been spent on this for 4 years), collected from citizens, personal data can be placed in consolidated databases, depersonalized and sold to third parties.

It is no coincidence that Natalya Tymoshchuk, Director of Corporate Business Development at Tele2 Moscow, in an interview with KP dated March 4, 2020, called the DB “the currency of the 21st century”.

“Bigdata is a big massive about a person, about his interests, movements, the use of mobile devices, the use of communications, and so on, and this impersonal data can be used by organizations in order to offer more targeted and needed services to their clients, people, and the population.

A person generates so much information that many analysts just said that in 2020 each person will generate about 1.7 gigabytes of information about himself per second. And in order to work with this information, new technologies are needed, because this is a huge array of data. In order to get something useful from this information, it is clear that these are new technologies, machine learning technologies that work with this data set according to certain scenarios and implement different output products for different tasks.

We are most often approached by companies that already CRM does not meet the needs of knowledge about their customer base, about the development of this base, who want to develop their base in a modern way, in the most effective way, because distributing leaflets near the metro has long been ineffective and not so modern. There are better ways to work with potential clients and existing clients. Therefore, we have about 40 tags, by which we can form an array of customer data and unsegment them according to various parameters that are of interest to our client. For example, interests, life events, age, gender, location of these people, what places they visit, at what time. This is important for different industries. There were very successful cases with the industries that are engaged in fitness, the sports industry, the beauty industry. Small business that really needs a lot of effective tools to work with their audience. And the exhaust from such products, as a rule, has a very high conversion and the appeal of these customers to us is increasing. That is, they use this tool not once, but twice, three times. This suggests that they have already appreciated it and are beginning to turn to this tool more, moving away from the traditional advertising campaigns of their own,”says Tymoshchuk.

And then logical questions immediately arise. It turns out that the whole anonymity of big data is only for the time being, because business is aimed precisely at targeted offers to specific citizens, and for this, one way or another, it needs to follow the lifestyle of specific people. “Interests, events in life, age, gender, location of these people, what places they visit, at what time” - this is more than enough for a detailed selection of specific individuals. And even if the company to which this information is sold does not know the name, surname and passport details of the potential client it needs, this will not make it easier for a person - all large and small social groups will be under the cap of marketers.

And with all the impersonality, the use of the database leads to personal offers, calls, letters and other ways to reach your "potential client", which many readers have probably come across personally. Here is what Mrs. Tymoshchuk tells about the possibilities of using the database:

“The first projects, of course, were implemented in Moscow. However, the demand for these products and the desire of customers to use them is growing throughout our country. There are customers, there are budgets that are already allocated for this type of activity, and, in fact, there are very successful cases in Russia. In particular, such a funny example in the agricultural zone of our country, where companies could not find staff at all. The resources for the search for personnel were not developed, maybe the Internet was not so available for these people, etc., in general, using the big data, it was possible to find people who were interested in working at these agricultural enterprises and there really were queues and it turned out very big competition for one place.

If we talk about the big data market, it is clear who is the biggest owner of big data in Russia. These are mobile operators and banks that, to one degree or another, use this data for the general good, monetize it in some way and issue some new products. Of course, there is competition at the level of products and the quality of these products,”Tymoschuk concluded.

For what “common good” the social engineers of the transhumanist German Gref from Sberbank use the database, we know very well. First of all, this is total control over your clients and getting them hooked on new products of the usurers. At the same time, we do not yet know what kind of resolutions the Government will regulate the turnover of databases, and the risks in this area lie on the surface. The most obvious one is the loss of the confidentiality of the database databases, the loss of anonymity, or the loss of control over this vast information. The main threat here is represented by hacker attacks, as well as the notorious human factor, which can manifest itself in any company or government structure at any time. Big Data involves the collection of information from everywhere - financial transactions, chatting, social networks, online conferences, the movement of people, their purchases, interests, etc. The loss of such information or the loss of confidentiality by it can lead to great threats for entire social groups, and some terrorist criminals can easily find their "target audience" in this way.

Imagine that data on travel routes, income levels, and people's lifestyles fell into the hands of smart criminals. They will be able to organize the kidnapping of the person they need, since they will know everything about him: where he works, with whom he meets, what he is afraid of. Already, fraudsters are using the basics of social engineering - they call and introduce themselves as other people, play out whole stories. They are trusted because they pronounce familiar names and talk about things that might not be known to outsiders. Today it still requires efforts from them and they can "pierce" on details that they could not find out. But with DB leaks, their hands will be completely untied.

Any information in the wrong hands is very dangerous. And the huge amounts of information in the clutches of criminals or, say, government officials who are not clean on hand, create a huge danger. Moreover, the movements and purchases of large social groups of the population, their personal preferences - all this is of great interest to our "respected partners" who are waging a verified information war to destroy Russian traditional values. And it is clear at what cost all huge databases and registries will be filled - through total surveillance of every citizen and collection of information without our consent. Therefore, the authorities should weigh everything a thousand times before legalizing this monkey with a grenade at the federal level.